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There are plenty but just yesterday I found one that was quite funny, at least to me. The UPS stores advertise that they can do printing for you such as banners and the such, well they have a large sign showing all their services. The one that caught my eye was a photo of a smart with a magnetic sign on its door... advertising of course magnetic signs for your car.....

Oh, the AT&T stores also have a pic of our smarts on their wall with a guy on a cell phone standing next to it. Nothing wrong with that one unless they advertise their mobile wifi for up to 5 people with it....

Actually, that is the Sprint store that has the white smart with the guy standing next to it.

SATO said:

Oh, the AT&T stores also have a pic of our smarts on their wall with a guy on a cell phone standing next to it. Nothing wrong with that one unless they advertise their mobile wifi for up to 5 people with it....

I have not seen any advertiseing for this great little car...Why doesn't the manufacturer have an ad program? I don't think there is any 2010 models in this country..What happened? I have been a proud owner of a 2009 for 1 1/2 years...

Here is an excerpt from a story posted on MSNBC that may shed a little light:

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In 2009, Smart sales plummeted to 14,600 units from 24,600 the previous year. And so far in 2010 sales are off another 60 percent from 2009’s dismal rate.

Now the company, a unit of Penske Automotive Group, is aiming to restart stalled sales with a reinvigorated marketing effort that puts Smart in front of the kinds of consumers who are apt to be interested.

Recognizing the need for Smart to start selling its cars rather than just taking orders from consumers, Smart has hired Jill Lajdziak, formerly general manager of GM’s Saturn division, to boost its marketing effort. With her new vice president of marketing, Kim McGill, Lajdziak has plotted a strategy of focused web and print advertising plus product placement in movies and TV shows.

For the first time, Smart is placing banner ads on car-shopping websites like Edmunds.com, kbb.com, AutoByTel.com and others. Smart is also targeting lifestyle websites that appeal to the kinds of active, environmentally concerned consumers who might be interested in buying a Smart, such as deviantART.com, said McGill. Online advertising has the advantage of making it possible to track results, she said.

“We measure the effectiveness of our marketing not only by how many people we attract but what they do after we attract them,” McGill noted.

Smart has also turned its back on traditional TV ads, instead pursuing a strategy of product placement in appropriate films and shows, such the new Katherine Heigl movie “Life as We Know It.” For the VH1 Do Something award show one winner chose to arrive in a chauffeured Smart car rather than a limo. And two reality shows will feature the car in the fall season.
The thinking behind these promotions is to plant the idea in consumers’ minds that a Smart fortwo, which sells for about $14,000 in a typical configuration, is a fun way to get around town. The same is true of Smart’s decision to reactivate the “Smart Street Team” program, which was first used in 2007 to introduce the brand to U.S. consumers.

This program puts small fleets of cars on the street in markets where consumers might be interested in trying one out for themselves. People can sit in the cars, kick tires and actually drive the fortwo to see whether they fit inside.

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There was a statistic mentioned at the end of the story that should cause concern at smart. Presumably, the focus group mentioned was composed of people who have already purchased a smart:

Another issue is that customers are unfamiliar with the car’s driving dynamics, Lajdziak said.
American consumers are used to traditional automatic transmissions, but the Smart uses an automatically shifted manual transmission. If this nuance is explained to customers in advance, so that they understand what to expect, they are more understanding of the sensation. If not, they will expect the smooth acceleration of a regular automatic transmission and find the Smart’s transmission jarring, said Lajdziak.

Distaste for this has led many owners to report that they wouldn’t recommend the car to friends and don’t plan to buy another themselves, according to Art Spinella, president of CNW Research, an automotive market research group.

Only 8.1 percent of focus group participants in the New York metro area said they would buy the car again, while 19.8 percent of participants in San Francisco said they would.

Installation of a true automatic transmission would surely attract more buyers, but that’s “not in the cards,” said Lajdziak.

Personally, I like the transmission in the car. The Smart Center in Jacksonville did an excellent job of taking me for a test drive and telling me how the transmission would work. As for the "lack" of advertising, the best advertising that they have is we that own, love and drive our cars. The attention that my car gets as I drive all over town is amazing. I make it a point to talk to all that stop and ask me questions. I love allowing them to sit in it and look around.

jackb said:

Here is an excerpt from a story posted on MSNBC that may shed a little light:

--------------------------------

In 2009, Smart sales plummeted to 14,600 units from 24,600 the previous year. And so far in 2010 sales are off another 60 percent from 2009’s dismal rate.

Now the company, a unit of Penske Automotive Group, is aiming to restart stalled sales with a reinvigorated marketing effort that puts Smart in front of the kinds of consumers who are apt to be interested.

Recognizing the need for Smart to start selling its cars rather than just taking orders from consumers, Smart has hired Jill Lajdziak, formerly general manager of GM’s Saturn division, to boost its marketing effort. With her new vice president of marketing, Kim McGill, Lajdziak has plotted a strategy of focused web and print advertising plus product placement in movies and TV shows.

For the first time, Smart is placing banner ads on car-shopping websites like Edmunds.com, kbb.com, AutoByTel.com and others. Smart is also targeting lifestyle websites that appeal to the kinds of active, environmentally concerned consumers who might be interested in buying a Smart, such as deviantART.com, said McGill. Online advertising has the advantage of making it possible to track results, she said.

“We measure the effectiveness of our marketing not only by how many people we attract but what they do after we attract them,” McGill noted.

Smart has also turned its back on traditional TV ads, instead pursuing a strategy of product placement in appropriate films and shows, such the new Katherine Heigl movie “Life as We Know It.” For the VH1 Do Something award show one winner chose to arrive in a chauffeured Smart car rather than a limo. And two reality shows will feature the car in the fall season.
The thinking behind these promotions is to plant the idea in consumers’ minds that a Smart fortwo, which sells for about $14,000 in a typical configuration, is a fun way to get around town. The same is true of Smart’s decision to reactivate the “Smart Street Team” program, which was first used in 2007 to introduce the brand to U.S. consumers.

This program puts small fleets of cars on the street in markets where consumers might be interested in trying one out for themselves. People can sit in the cars, kick tires and actually drive the fortwo to see whether they fit inside.

-----------------------

There was a statistic mentioned at the end of the story that should cause concern at smart. Presumably, the focus group mentioned was composed of people who have already purchased a smart:

Another issue is that customers are unfamiliar with the car’s driving dynamics, Lajdziak said.
American consumers are used to traditional automatic transmissions, but the Smart uses an automatically shifted manual transmission. If this nuance is explained to customers in advance, so that they understand what to expect, they are more understanding of the sensation. If not, they will expect the smooth acceleration of a regular automatic transmission and find the Smart’s transmission jarring, said Lajdziak.

Distaste for this has led many owners to report that they wouldn’t recommend the car to friends and don’t plan to buy another themselves, according to Art Spinella, president of CNW Research, an automotive market research group.

Only 8.1 percent of focus group participants in the New York metro area said they would buy the car again, while 19.8 percent of participants in San Francisco said they would.

Installation of a true automatic transmission would surely attract more buyers, but that’s “not in the cards,” said Lajdziak.

I simply can't imagine someone buying a smart car because they saw an ad.

People buy them because we want something different and we had a chance to drive one.

Since there are so few 'dealers' the cars need to be taken to the people where people will see and test drive them. The name is certainly becoming more recognized but people are going to give far more weight to people who own them and drive them - never mind the reviews people take them with a grain of salt.

BTW - I love the contradictions in advertising by UPS stores and ATT. I work for a company that makes office cubicles - we always have Macintoshes in our advertising, even though corporate America (at least corporate IT) hates them. I guess someone thinks it makes us look cool even though our stuff can be pretty stodgy.

i only get 41 MPG when it's below freezing outside, i'm getting 48+MPGs during the summer months, if traffic isn't bad, i get over 50MPGs. smart needs to challenge the EPA, all my other cars used to get below EPA estimates, the smart, when i drive, gets 25-50% over EPA ratings.